Quote from: gmaxwell on February 02, 2013, 09:09:59 PM

I'm not aware of any evidence to suggest that it was temporary from the start...

Ummm, see this old forum thread, where Satoshi says:

Quote

It can be phased in, like:

if (blocknumber > 115000)
maxblocksize = largerlimit

It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don't have it are already obsolete.

When we're near the cutoff block number, I can put an alert to old versions to make sure they know they have to upgrade.